Inertial Security: A Retirement Plan for Unemployed Americans

Dec 8, 2010

RUSH: Now, on another subject, why aren’t we creating a retirement program for the unemployed? Don’t they need pensions for all the years they’ve not worked so they can go to Florida and not work? I mean, we have pensions… Like Tim Pawlenty. He had a bus strike. They wanted full health care and pensions after working for 15 years. We’ve been told that the unemployed receiving benefits are an economic stimulus and that not paying these people not to work would cost us 600,000 jobs, or some number. Well, why…? Why even contemplate the notion of having them go back to work, then?

We’re extending unemployment benefits. We’ve done it six times since 2008. We do it because it’s Christmastime and there aren’t any jobs. Why not just create a Social Security-type program for ’em now and just start giving ’em that money and say, ‘You never have to go back to work.’ Look at the unemployment rate. It would come down immediately, ’cause all those people unemployed would simply no longer have to work because they’d be on this new retirement plan that we create. They need pensions, too. The unemployed need pensions, too, for all the work they haven’t done and to pay for all the years that they haven’t worked. Where are our hearts, I ask?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, even more than pensions, what about reparations for the unemployed? How about a Social Security-like retirement program for them? Get all the economic stimulus there, and then this reparations. It’s not their fault. It’s society’s fault that they don’t have any jobs. Just plug ’em in there on that Pigford lawsuit like is already being done. Give ’em reparations.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have a name, a brilliant idea here: A retirement program for the unemployed. All these other people have pensions after working 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. Some of their pensions are 80% of what they earn. Some are a hundred percent. They get health care and other benefits added to it. But look at the unemployed. For crying out loud! And the unemployed, according to Democrats, are one of the great economic stimuluses that we have. The unemployed! That’s what Pelosi is saying. A number of Democrats are saying that. It’s because, ‘for every dollar of unemployment benefit, it’s like putting two dollars into the economy, because the unemployed really spend it.

‘I mean, they really spend it fast, ’cause they don’t have any other money — and if we don’t continue to fund unemployment benefits, then we’re gonna lose 600,000 jobs,’ which I would think would be good. The more unemployed, the greater economic stimulus, according to these people. I note that whenever a Democrat makes this point on television, not one TV anchor or personality scratches on her head and says, ‘Would you repeat that to me? Do you really mean to say that we will lose 600,000 jobs if we stop paying people not to work? Is that…? Are you really saying we stimulate the economy with these unemployment benefit checks? Do you really believe that? Is that what I’m hearing you say?’ Not one reporter does this. They just accept it.

Now, if a Republican were saying something like this, I guarantee you, Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington) would be boring in trying to understand this. Now, the only thing better, the only thing better than the unemployed stimulating the economy would be illegal aliens unemployed. An unemployed illegal alien, according to Pelosi, that would really stimulate things. So these people are perpetually unemployed now, and they’ve said this is the new norm. This is a new norm: 9.5, 10% unemployment. Therefore, we need a pension plan for these people, and I’ve got the name of it. We just call it Inertial Security, not to be confused with Social Security because we’ve already got that, but this is a retirement plan, a pension plan for the unemployed.

It’s only fair. It’s not their fault they’re outta work. It’s society’s fault. Give ’em reparations, too, maybe. But we’ll call it Inertial Security. Now, I’m being asked, ‘isn’t the deal collapsing okay? Isn’t it a good thing for our side?’ In one way, yeah. In one way. Because the Democrats are going to be responsible for tax increases on everybody. Now, they’re gonna blame it on the Republicans, and Obama would love for the deal to be scuttled. He doesn’t care about the people. He’d love for the deal to be scuttled so that he could then say (impression), ‘I had’a deal. You heard me in my press conference. We were ready to roll, aaaand, uh, Democrats had to oppose it ’cause of the last minute things the Republicans put in there.’ He wants to blame the Republicans for this.

But I’m not gonna be crying any spilt milk if it falls apart, or crying over spilt milk. I don’t want my taxes to go up. I really don’t. But this isn’t just personal. ‘Cause if this doesn’t get done now, guess when it does? It’s gonna get done with the new guys, with the cavalry arriving next month, and it will be an even better deal, and then it will be Obama on the hook for keeping ‘a tax increase for the middle class,’ and that he does not want going into the election of 2012. There’s a lot of posturing going on right now. Dingy Harry is talking like they’ve got the votes to pass it. He’s focusing on other things. They secretly want this. When you send Biden over there to McConnell to get this deal going, you know that the powers that be on both sides want this to happen.

So a lot of this opposition to it, I think, is political posturing. Barney Frank, some of these obscure liberal Democrats you don’t even know, they’re the ones going on TV now, and they are posturing for their own reelection.